Heavy glitching with Noire on tempo changes in REAPER

TomislavEP

I'm working on a solo piano project with Noire library in the main role. Unfortunately, I'm experiencing audio glitches that seem to occur on any type of tempo change event. It is particularly strong on ramps (gradual transition between the two tempo markers). I never had such a problem with any of my other software from Native Instruments nor with the 3rd party ones. I've read some comments that the internal Replika effect could be a culprit, but disabling doesn't seem to help...

BTW, I'm using the latest version of REAPER 6 and Kontakt 6. The track template with Noire uses a 64-bit version of the VST2 plugin. I've tried using the VST3 version instead, but it doesn't seem to help either...

Any ideas on this? Thanks!

EvilDragon

This is because of Replika delay effect. I think it's actually worse if that effect is bypassed. Counterintuitive, but that's how it is. It's a known issue.

EvilDragon

This is because of Replika delay effect. I think it's actually worse if that effect is bypassed. Counterintuitive, but that's how it is. It's a known issue.

TomislavEP

Thanks! I'll hope this will get fixed eventually. In the meantime, I'll try to substitute Noire with some of my other piano libraries, at least on pieces that feature tempo changes.

ThomasM74

If you have Kontakt Full, if you don't need the Replika Delay you can also just go to edit mode and delete it from Send Effects. I made only a quick test but I did not see a really negative impact. Of course then don't save the instrument...

TomislavEP

@ThomasM74, thanks for your reply and suggestion. Yes, I'm working with a full version of Kontakt; have tried to disable Replika in sends but it doesn't seem to help. I'll try saving a custom nki with the effect removed and test this with a track template made from scratch.

EvilDragon

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/1753#Comment_1753

This won't help because the script will re-insert the effect back on engine reset (i.e. project reload).

tbrown92030

New to using Noire and I am experiencing this problem with the Kontakt 7 Player (I do not have Kontakt Full). Any updates or recommendations on how to work around this, if at all? This makes gradual accelerandos and ritardandos pretty useless for an otherwise most excellent piano VST.

TomislavEP

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/43251#Comment_43251

Sadly, this means this problem still isn't solved... I haven't updated to Komplete 14 yet so I don't have access to Kontakt 7. P.S. There was a changelog about several fixes pertaining to Replika in Kontakt 6 a few months ago. Unfortunately, the problem remained.

tbrown92030

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/43255#Comment_43255

Well, shoot! I did open a support ticket/request (although, presumably, there already is one for this problem).

tbrown92030

A quick update...

While working with NI tech support on this issue, I was able to narrow the problem down to my audio settings in Reaper. I use a Steinberg Audio Interface and the Yamaha/Steinberg ASIO driver for it. I had my settings for the ASIO driver optimized for vocal recording (low latency) and had a fairly small block and buffer size. Increasing these to around 1024 samples has resolved this issue for me.

TomislavEP

Thanks! I will try the same to see if this works for me.

TomislavEP

I tried the abovementioned suggestion and indeed it works. Setting the buffer size to 1024 both in my interface's settings and in REAPER does remove the glitching on tempo ramps when playing back projects using the Noire library. However, the latency is too much compared to what I'm used to working with. So I'm still hoping for an official solution to this issue.

P.S. I can confirm, that despite the mentioned problem, my projects using Noire render fine even with the tempo changes. Also when using a low buffer size, which I usually do.

tbrown92030

Yes, rendering works fine (which was another clue for me that the problem was likely something with the audio interface rather than pure CPU-bound issues).

I'll just have to remember to change buffer sizes when recording to avoid the latency. For a monitoring/headphone mix I can just use a simpler piano VST if needed. Yeah, it would be nice to have Noire simply work well even with minimal buffering in the audio output. That Replika delay must be pretty intense, that it requires such buffering.